And, unfortunately, our voyage was both long and disagreeable, for we had scarcely got clear of Luderitz Bay one fine evening than it came on to blow great guns, and so heavy did the weather become that our skipper had to run clean out to sea. Up to then I had fondly imagined I knew something about the sea, and was proof against such a very amateur malady as sea-sickness; but alas! I had a lot to learn. Indeed, I soon found that, in spite of a good deal of knocking about the sea at various times, I really knew nothing of bad weather. There was no snuggling down in a cosy cabin or the soft cushions of a big saloon about this experience, no looking at big seas through the comforting protection of thick plate-glass portholes. Here the huge waves were towering, threatening, imminent; and nothing but the coolest of heads, and strongest and steadiest of hands at the helm, could have kept the little cockle-shell from shipping a big sea and foundering. Portions of big seas she shipped repeatedly, and little seas in the intervals; in fact, for hours she appeared to consider herself to be a sort of submarine of which I suppose I must have been the periscope--for I was continually endeavouring to stand erect in my attempt to dodge the waves. Within an hour or two of leaving the bay I was wet through, and continued so till I got on shore again; and during that period of three nights and two days I had ample reason to know that sea-sickness is not nearly as laughable as it looks! They gave me rum and water, and it made me worse; they coaxed me with hard ship’s biscuit and fat bully beef, and somehow it failed to entice me. Once, in a comparatively dry interval, they managed to light a stove and make some alleged coffee. It tasted so of seal oil that it merely effected the apparently impossible by making me feel worse than I did before.